Another month, another sprint retrospective!

High-level metrics

Sleep Score

• 72 -> 79

Activity Score

• 85 -> 87

Weight

• 165lbs -> 165lbs

KRs

[P0] Key Result 1: Develop a Consistent Sleeping Pattern

Data

Last month I averaged a wakeup time of 7:33am, bedtime of 12:27am and total sleep of 7hrs 32min.

Looking at the raw data, the median sleep duration was 8hrs and 8 minutes.

What really made me want to focus on this was the insane variability in my sleeping patterns. The absolute numbers themselves aren't bad but looking at the graph below the outliers are concerning. You can clearly see this by comparing the median sleep duration from the average total sleep druation.

I had days where I slept for over 10 hours and others where I slept less than 5 hours! Alternatively, you can see one day I slept at 7pm and others I slept at 2am. Consistency was my main goal here.

Before looking at the data, I thought my sleep this month wasn't great either! But you can clearly see the data is much more consistent (especially early in the month).

I averaged a wakeup time of 6:11am, bedtime of 9:42pm and total sleep of 8hrs and 2min. All average metrics improved!

Looking at the raw data, the median sleep duration was 8hrs and 11min.

Summary

There are still some pretty large outliers going towards the end of the month but overall happy with the progress.

Overall, my Oura Ring sleep score went from 70 -> 79 from September to October. This improvement is a little biased since September was a pretty terrible month for sleep. My long term average statistics (from May to Novemember) is 6:52am wakeup time, 11:47pm bedtime, 8h 4min of sleep and 77 sleep score.

KR score: 8/10. Succeeded but still some kinks to iron out. Let's keep working on this.

As a side note, I wish Oura Ring used the median as their statistic as opposed to the average. For the typical person looking to see how their sleep is trending they really want the mean. They don't want that one night of drinking to skew the whole distribution. On the flip side, if you saw a trend value in a graph you'd expect it to be the average so I can see why they picked the less useful but less suprising metric. When I have more time I'll convert the bedtime/wakeuptime to a median since I think that will be the more useful statistic to look at. Maybe I'll send the Oura Ring team an email, I'm sure it'd be a single line source code change :).

[P1] Key Result 2: Morning and Night Routines

Data

Week 1 was a great success! I did yoga/core workouts on non-tennis days and did my night routine!

Week 2 began the trend downwards. The first thing that goes away is the important but not urgent. That is my entire night routine disappeared. It often turned into finish work, eat, consume media and to bed. Non-essential exercise (e.g. not tennis) also went goodbye!

Week 3 much of the same as week 2.

Week 4 I pretty much gave up on tracking. You'll see some correlation with my sleep and my routine especially in Week 4.

Summary

Consistency falls off quickly as I start getting busy. The routines and sleep are the first to go. Need to make sure not to completely ignore my routine and if things go south just quickly pick myself up.

KR Score 5/10: Still a good amount of work to be done here to get this to a consistent routine.

[P1] Key Result 3: Reading

"This should simply fall in using my night routine" is what I said in the planning. The converse is true, without my night routine I will skip this.

KR Score 3/10: First week did do some reading, after that not much.

[P0] Key Result 1: Execute on Critical Features

Execution at work always goes well because it consumes the rest of my time :P. However, a key point was "don't sign up for more than you can chew". I think I consistently ignore this advice and always want to tackle everything. I think we're doing well on this KR but only because we give ourself endless amount of time to execute on it. We need to start restricting the time spent on this KR to ensure we're effective and the other KRs get appropriate attention.

KR Score 7/10: Did really well! Still signing up for a little too much.

[P0] Key Result 1: Exercise

Exercise has been fantastic! Tennis is consistent and starting to get more intense too. In fact, my Oura Ring is telling me I've been exercising too much :P. I've recently got myself a bench and some adjustable dumbbells. However, at the same time my gym opened up!

We need to be sure not to overwhelm ourself. It will now be tricky trying to balance our powerlifting goals / gym routine with tennis. Oh well, I'm young and my body can take a beating :).

KR Score 9/10: Awesome job here.

[P1] Key Result 3: Reflecting (Mental Health)

Kind of interdependent with the routine :(. However, I did make some improvements here! There were times I went for a walk and meditated briefly in the park. Find myself taking more time to just relax recently.

KR Score 4/10: Score is low because it didn't hit the success criteria but we did make some improvements here.

Summary

Overall the P0s we planned to do this sprint were on track! The routine aspect has been difficult but measuring it on the whiteboard definitely helped. I've been trying to get into a routine for the last few years so I'm not suprised it wouldn't just all align in a single month. We just need to keep at it!

The key takeaway is [P0] KR1: Execute on Critical features is doing incredibly well but is seeping into the time of the other KRs. Onwards to planning!